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OS/2 Shareware BBS: 7 Games
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07-Games.zip
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gp2beta.zip
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README.TXT
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1995-02-01
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COPYRIGHT NOTICE
All trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective
owners.
All graphics in this ZIP file may only be used for viewing purposes.
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******************************************
******************************************
* *
* MicroLearn Game Pack, Volume 2 *
* - Demo bitmaps *
* *
* beta version, February 01, 1995 *
* *
******************************************
******************************************
In this ZIP file you'll find some beta screen shots from the "MicroLearn Game
Pack, Vol. 2" for OS/2.
This text file (README.TXT) gives you some information about this product.
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GENERAL INFORMATION
===================
"MicroLearn Game Pack, Volume 2" (MLGP2) is a sequel to MicroLearn Nordic's
first OS/2 product - "MicroLearn Nordic, Volume 1" (MLGP1). The games in
MLGP2 is completely new - no game from MLGP1 appears in MLGP2.
We've got a lot of feedback from our MLGP1 users and we've tried to listen
to all comments and create the new game package from that. The beta testers
have also (and still are) given us very much valuable information.
We are working very hard to make MLGP2 as good as ever possible in all
important areas.
The beta screen shots in this ZIP file has been selected to show you some
different aspects of MLGP2.
- MORRIS.GIF - This screen shot shows a logic-only type of game. The game is
called 'Morris'. Other games in this category are 'Blox' and 'ML Memory'.
- COMBO2.GIF - This screen shot shows a type of game that contains both
action and strategy. The game is called 'Combo II'. The other game in this
category is 'MirrorMan'.
- SAURON.GIF - This screen shots shows a typical action-style game. The
game is called 'Sauron's Eye'. Other games in this category are 'Rock Runner'
and 'LongLegs'.
- NOTEBK.GIF - This shows you how a typical notebook page will look like in
MLGP2. The particular screen shot is from Morris. Note the rounded style
of the controls that is used in all dialogs and notebook in MLGP2.
- MUSIC.GIF - This is not a screen shot, but 'shows' how the music and sound
effects in MLGP2 will sound like.
Please note that the screen shots are beta screen shots - they may change
until release.
Screen shots can't tell you everything about MLGP2 - only give you some ideas
what it's about. A demo game will be sent out some time before the release of
MLGP2, showing the 'feeling' of MLGP2. The demo game is NOT a limited version
of any MLGP2 game, but a stand-alone game in the same style as the MLGP2 games.
The demo game will be released together with screen shots of all the MLGP2
games.
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DETAILED INFORMATION
====================
We are working hard to make MLGP2 as good as possible. Most of our
efforts have been put into the following areas:
* The user interface
* Graphics
* Music/Sounds
* Ease-of-use
* Playing fun
* Performance
THE USER INTERFACE
The user interface is probably quite different from what you've seen before
in OS/2 applications. We've made a lot of enhancements to the PM interface.
For example:
- Free-form push buttons - the push buttons can have ANY form
- 3 dialog push button styles - Symbol+text, Text only, Symbol only (selectable)
- Animated mouse pointers - if you want to, you can get the arrow mouse
pointer to move its tail and the hand pointer to turn around (optional)
- A 'rounded' dialog style - including group boxes with shadows, push
buttons and other dialog controls
- Notebook tabs with icons (optional)
- A dialog hint line to get quick help in the dialogs (optional)
- Menu hint text at the top/bottom/none (selectable)
- Auto-placement of the mouse pointer at the OK (or Yes) push button
in dialogs (optional)
- A totally configurable field for the player representaion with face bitmap,
first name, last name, callsign. The user can create new players in a
special SOM object and drag the player into the game.
- Different dialog backgrounds for different games and/or notebooks. The
dialog background reflects what game the user is playing or what type of
settings the user are changing (the music settings notebook has a background
looking like sheet music, for example - this particular background can
actually be seen in the MUSIC.GIF file).
- A safety feature for notebooks to alert the user if the notebook is
cancelled when data has been changed (optional)
- Much more good-looking caption/title bar with shaded text. The title
bar can have different texts in different colors at the same time.
- Automatically pause when the game loses focus (optional)
- Small menus for the novice and full menus for the expert (selectable)
- Graphical animations in the dialogs and notebooks to visually represent
what the user has selected
- Our own character 'Thor' (he's a cartoon-style viking that can be seen
in the MUSIC.GIF file) is guiding the user through MLGP2. He appears all
over in both the games and the on-line documentation.
GRAPHICS
All MLGP2 game supports both high-resolution and low-resolution graphics
as well as both 16 and 256 color graphics. All screen shots in this ZIP
file is for 1024x768 with 256 colors.
The MLGP2 graphics includes, for example:
- Nice-looking intro bitmaps while the game is loading
- Different wallpapers for both the main window and the dialogs/notebooks
- Push buttons both in the game area and in the dialogs/notebooks.
- A lot of different game backgrounds so the user can select his/her own
favourite.
- A vast number of different animation effects, for example explosions,
disappearances and movements
- Faces for the 5 default players. All characters are from the Star
Trek (and the Star Trek Next Generation) series. Every face has been
carefully drawn to look as close to the original character faces as
possible
- A lot of graphics is used to help the user in the dialogs and notebooks.
Both static bitmaps and animations are heavily used to reflect the
currently selected actions
MUSIC/SOUNDS
The single most (by far) wished feature from our MLGP1 users was to include
music and sound support in our products. In MLGP2 we have included full
music/sound support.
The Music/Sound support for example includes:
- Every sound effect in each game can be changed if the user doesn't like
the default sound.
- Almost 30 lovely tunes to run as background music. Almost every of the
tunes is specially composed for MLGP2, the others are special MLGP2
transcriptions of old popular music. The user can select the favourite
background music for each different game.
- Sound effects for system events, like when a push button is pressed (optional)
- The music system is very abstract, making it possible to include support
even for non-MMPM/2 sound devices/drivers.
- Full control of volume and balance from within the applications.
Please note that you can run MLGP2 even if you don't have a sound card or
if you don't have MMPM/2 installed.
Since it's kind of difficult to 'show' how the MLGP2 music and sounds will
sound like (a WAV or MID file wouldn't say much), we've included a bitmap
to display how it feels when listening to it (MUSIC.GIF).
EASE-OF-USE
Every game in MLGP2 have the same kind of user interface, so if you know
how to use one game, you can use them all.
A number of different features is used to guide the user in the program,
for example:
- Extensive on-line documentation
- Lots of graphical presentations instead of text
- Hint text for both menu items and dialog/notebook controls
The on-line help for MLGP2 is vastly improved compared to the MLGP1
documentation. An on-line manual is at your hand to give the user some general
hints and information and every game of course has its own on-line help.
The on-line reference is very good-looking and contains a lot of
cross-references to help you to find the information as fast as possible.
In both the on-line help and the reference, Thor the viking is guiding you
in a very entertaining way.
PLAYING FUN
This is of course the most important part. The beta testers has helped
us a lot with comments about what they like and dislike in the games and
we think that the games will be very fun to play.
One feature in MLGP2 is the 'auto-creation' feature for some of the
level-based games. This means that the computer can create a completely
new level by using the parameters given by the user.
Please note that it has never been our intention to get all people
to like all the different games in MLGP2. Each individual has different
taste. Our goal is to make all people have some favourites among the
MLGP2 games. The MLGP2 beta testing clearly shows that different people
have different game favourites.
PERFORMANCE
With so much bells and whistles that MLGP2 contains, it's easy to get lousy
system performance. We have invested a large amount of time and efforts to
avoid this problem.
To get a fully responsible system at all times, MLGP2 makes heavy use
of threads. The threads are used in all kinds of situations, from game
animations to dialog graphics updates and background calculations.
You may for example notice the hand shadow in MORRIS.GIF. The hand shadow
is a darker area under the hand to get a 3D feeling. The shadow is
calculated in real-time. Only a multithreaded operating system like OS/2
can deliver the performance needed to get this kind of operation working
on slower systems.
The startup sequence in all the MLGP2 games is done in a background thread,
so the user can continue to work with the system when the game is loading
(an intro bitmap is shown while the game is loading).
In OS/2 Warp, the EXE file retrieval is also threaded - so when you run the
MLGP2 games under OS/2 Warp you will have a fully responsible system at all
times.
All games are very well optimized. Different threading and graphics
techniques are used to get good performance in the action games.
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Q&A SECTION
===========
Q: How much will MLGP2 cost?
A: The SRP will be about USD $49.
Q: When will MLGP2 be released?
A: No date yet decided. Probably end of Q1 or beginning of Q2 1995. It will
not be released on the 1st of April.
Q: What system is needed to run MLGP2?
A: A system running with OS/2 2.1 or later. OS/2 Warp or later is
strongly recommended. 8 MB RAM minimum. MMPM/2 optional.
Q: How do I view the .GIF screen shots?
A: Use any graphics viewer that support the GIF file format. There are some
good OS/2 PM shareware applications for this task, for example Galleria,
JoeView and PMJPEG. You don't need to use the OS/2 palette manager to get
the correct colors, since MLGP2 uses the standard OS/2 palette.
Q: Will the release of MLGP2 affect MLGP1 in any way?
A: The future of MLGP1 is not yet decided.
Q: Will MLGP2 be translated to other (foreign) languages?
A: Yes. MLGP2 will be translated to languages other than english, for
example German and Spanish. However, please note that these versions
will not be released until some time after the english GA release.
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If you have any more questions regarding this document, send your
questions to:
question@microlearn.se (please note the spelling)
If you have any comments on the screen shots that can help us making the
game package even better, please send them to:
beta@microlearn.se
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